Shattered Sapphire
by Ascendant Harbinger
Summary: With Anna's friendship, the deep gashes in Elsa's twisted history can finally start to heal. But will life's bitterness ever leave her alone? Warning: highly emotional and angst-y. [modern AU]
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1: Still Waters

She stared at that one line of words. Those innocent harbingers of terror that had broken her crippled heart, her soul, one month ago. Time was, is, will be, irrelevant. She lay on her bed, staring at her phone, but looking past it, the deep dark maelstrom of her conflicted thoughts reflected in her unfocused eyes. She smiled, but it was not one of vain, innocent happiness. It was of pure, dark, cruel contemplation. She had been beautiful, once. Her impeccable complexion had long since been covered with streaks of mascara where her tears had run, her once shapely figure now thin. There was a time where the city-goers would have smiled at her as she walked past. Now they barely glanced by at the shadow that was all that was left. She rose, heavy feet trudging slowly out of her apartment, into the night. The eerie glow cast by the flickering streetlamps embraced her flowing dark clothes seeming to beckon her to wherever it shone darkest, shadows clawing at her. Her long, messy platinum blonde hair trailed out behind her, catching the light with highlights like a fallen angel's halo. A black cat caterwauled in the distance, an unholy cry of terror and malice. The blood moon glowed red, casting a sickly crimson glow on the imposing outline of bare evergreen trees, like towering malevolent statues standing frozen in the darkness. The cold scarlet luminescence transformed the filthy frost on the potholed tarmac into streams of blood.

She found herself on the wet, rotten boards of the small dock overlooking the River Oathorae. She stood on the edge, swaying with uncomfortable emotion. They say that the depressed need to seek help, that they don't recognize it when it strikes. They're wrong. The depressed, more than anyone, know their predicament. Oh, they know better than anyone ever could. She didn't want help, for she didn't hate the world, merely loved it to the point that she was willing to let it go. For when the shadowy tendrils of loneliness tears away the few remaining strands of your humanity- your ability to appreciate the world with others- there is nothing left in life. There's no point dragging yourself through a monotone of fake smiles and insincere hugs, dragging yourself through the misery of life until you realise what you have been living is not life but death and that the two are one and the same, the shadows and light blending meaninglessly until neither existed any more. There's no point. One final tear collected in her bloodshot eyes, slowly but surely rolling down her face like a pearl made of her last remaining heartstrings, the rest torn to pieces that one month ago. The tear plunged into the dark, murky, still waters of the River Oathorae.

She followed.

The first thing she felt was an overwhelming sense of calm as she splashed down into the depths of the river, the sound splitting the night like an executioner's blade. Even as the terrible water made its way past her face, enveloping her, soaking her to the bone, creeping slowly into her lungs, she had never felt as peaceful. Like her last remnants of warmth, the cruel inner turmoils slipped away from her, the emotions she had compressed into her leaking heart finally finding an avenue to escape her battered self, escaping into the emotionless depths of the still waters.

The only thing left for her was the terrible cold. The cold that permeated her very being, chilling her body, her emotions, her thoughts, numbing her till only the cold remained.

It's… It's so cold…

So… So very cold…

Cold…


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's note: Hey guys, Ascendant Harbinger here, have you guessed who "she" is yet? It might surprise you, but don't worry, all will be explained in later chapters. If you would like to find out more about the world this story is set in, I've set up a Facebook page "Ascendant Harbinger" with the map of the various locations and stuff. This is my first fanfiction story, so please feel free to leave a review for me to improve on my writing style, I'd really appreciate it. Thanks! **

Weak rays of refracted light bit into her sensitive eyes as they squinted slowly open, the tendrils of unconsciousness slowly uncoiling around her vulnerable soul. She blinked twice, confusion's bloodied claws gripping her in a cruel stranglehold. For a moment, a foreign emptiness permeated her very being. Then, she remembered. It all came flooding back, like a brutal slap in the face. The walk through the lonely woods, the tears, the mental scars, the frigid water finally taking everything away, a train of destruction slamming savagely into her, overwhelming her and leaving her to drown once again in her frigid ocean of emotions. Her blissful ignorance that had promised her a new start, beautiful confusion, had now been utterly destroyed, a pleasant dream vanquished by the true, undisguised nightmare of life. Now, the light filtered through a glassy, translucent shell that enveloped her like a womb cradles a stillborn. This is heaven, then. No majestic spires of gleaming marble, no incredible structures made of gold plating flanked by cherubims, only this lonely enclosure that seemed to press down oppressively on her thoughts. She'd never before been claustrophobic, but now her temples ached and the shell seemed to loom maliciously around her. She curled up into a fetal position, closing her bloodshot eyes once more, blocking out all that surrounded her. She lay there unmoving for a time until she noticed a wet sensation slowly creeping up her ankles. Finally she took a closer look at the sapphire translucency, her eyes focusing on the minute lattice-like cracks in the shell. It suddenly dawned on her what this terrible, terrible enclosure was made of. She shivered, suddenly noticed the cold. The cold that came in waves of frigidity like a bombing raid, each time seeming to pick her up and slam her against a wall, letting her recover just enough to smash her down once again and crush her with its cold-hearted power, like it was toying with her insignificant life, a tiny midget in the hands of a towering omnipresent god. Her breaths were ragged as the cold drowned out everything, the only reminder of her existence the blood roaring in her ears until even that slowly faded and she began to succumb. Her vision blurred and everything collapsed into a phantasm of black spots in her vision and her consciousness slowly faded to naught.

She stirred. She was only vaguely aware of herself, in sleep paralysis, the plague of sleep slowly abating but never granting her the double-edged sword of apathetic consciousness, free to witness the inevitable destruction of beauty but never to do anything about it. Her mind was foggy, swarmed with an interminable farrago of memories. She became aware of the indistinct sound of waves breaking, and her weary eyes opened once more. She shrieked.

"Wh... who are you?" Her voice cracked from misuse, raspy and dry on her tongue as she stared at the brunette looking down at her with ochre brown eyes gleaming with innocent excitement. Then her eyes swept across the room and she recoiled against the bed rest. She was lying on a vulgarly pink bed in a vulgarly pink room. "Hey, you've finally woken up, sleepyhead. I've been worried sick, you were out cold for two days since I picked you up at the beach, I thought something really bad happened. Now that you're awake, you need to take a long warm bath and comb your hair and put on some weight, how'd you get so thin anyway... sorry, I'm rambling now. Okay, first things first, I'm Anna." Any casual person would be thanking Anna for saving their life, but then again no casual person had died, come back to life only to die again before coming back to life. She didn't know if this was true any more, didn't know if this life was really life or death or just another twisted reality somewhere in between. She didn't know if anything was true any more, the line separating truth from illusions blurring into a suffocating haze that choked her and brought tears to her eyes. "...and this is Arendelle. Hello? You're kind of zoning out on me here. Haven't seen you around here, where are you from?" Arendelle. She sat up and buried her face in her hands, the unbelievable truth suddenly dawning on her. She was alive. And had somehow drifted a dozen miles in the freezing River Oathorae before washing up on Arendelle's beach. Even discounting drowning, hypothermia would have swiftly tightened his withered hand on her neck and extinguished the flickering, wavering ember of her life. The incredulousness of it all gave her a splitting migraine, and the pathetic remains of her battered heart felt like it had been ripped in two. All her life she'd failed miserably, but even in death she couldn't succeed, couldn't run away from the monstrosity of life, couldn't escape the malevolence of the truth.

"I'm from Weselton. My name is..."

What were names, anyway? Just a meaningless excuse to give identification to a person, tying them irreversibly down to the eternal hell that was life, forcing them to shoulder the weight of the world that the intrinsic selfishness of others could never even begin to fathom, putting them on a leash to answer to every back and call of the callous universe, to get rewarded with heaping piles of loss, tears and disappointment. The words felt hollow and bitter as they left her mouth.

"My name is Elsa."


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3: Mending Scars

**Author's note: Hi guys, thanks so much for the reviews, really appreciate it! I hope you enjoy the chapter as much as I enjoyed writing it!**

* * *

Elsa sat solitarily on the edge of the windowsill, staring out at the inky darkness of night, the fjords' imposing silhouette dark against the moonlight glinting off the still waters, like the calm before a storm. She was cleaner, warmer, and more full than she had ever been in the past month, but her emotions ran more unchecked than ever, conflict raging on in her fragile mind like a wildfire of confusion, burning down any semblance of sanity. Just a few days back when she had stood at the edge of that fateful dock, her fate had been sure and so had been her intent, she had known what she had to do without a doubt. But now, having experienced the torn lantern of her life extinguished and relit twice, she no longer knew, doubt a tiny seed growing in her heart into a malicious slithering serpent searing her with its vicious venom. Anna should have left her body there on the shore, left her to die as she should have, nothing but an insignificant whisper in the wind. Anna had taken away Elsa's chance to grey, empty death when she had embraced the abyss. Now it was too late. Elsa loathed Anna for that, a cold blizzard of fiery hate brewing in her blood. She drifted off into a convoluted sleep to the sound of murky waves breaking against the shadowy sandy shores.

* * *

She woke slowly, the late morning sunlight searing her sensitive eyes that had long ago become used to the realm of blanketing, all-consuming darkness. She was vaguely aware of a brush gently caressing her hair, slowly unraveling the stubborn tangles born from nights of insomniac paroxysms of tears. "Hey, you're awake. Eat this, you're really undernourished," Anna whispered as she held out a bowl of cereal to Elsa, pointing accusingly at her thin arms. As Elsa gratefully reached out for the food, Anna continued "Really fortunate that I managed to find you there, if not you wouldn't be alive now." Death. Beckoning to her that night, offering her the pathetic straws of respite that her degenerating psyche had so desperately clung to, now cruelly destroyed, a bridge burning in the distance. Because Anna had "saved" her. Who was she to decide her life or death, anyway? Why had she interfered, subjecting Elsa to the inevitable, unending torment of life?

In a fateful instant, the back of Elsa's hand made contact with Anna's cheek with a crack that split the wintry silence like a gunshot, Anna's head snapping backward, stunned by the harsh blow. The bowl shattered into fractals of sharp, jagged pieces on the cold, unfeeling marble floor. "Wh...what was that for?" Anna stammered, lying shell-shocked like a wounded puppy against the wall, a clear crimson mark already surfacing on her soft flesh. Elsa turned to face her, a hurricane of fury raging behind her piercing blue eyes. "Why didn't you just leave me there? Who are you to judge if Death should or should not claim me? How'd you know if I wanted to live or not? Because I DO NOT!" she shrieked, the emotion she'd bottled up for so long finally released in an unrelenting tsunami of hate and fear and insecurity. Anna recoiled against the wall, taken aback by her words. "Life... is sacred. There's always something to hope for. Why would you hate it so much?" Anna's voice was barely a tentative whimper. A painful grimacing smirk surfaced on Elsa's face, a caustic poison in her piercing cyan eyes. "You live such an easy life, you've never experienced true pain like I have, you always have that light at the end of the tunnel. Why didn't, why don't, why don't you recognize that I DON'T? You don't have the RIGHT!"

In an instant, Anna was a different person. The almost unnoticeable sagging of her shoulders, the brightness in her brown eyes now replaced with a dullness like dying wood, her posture slouching ever so slightly. The once jovial, carefree, Anna had been replaced with a defeated, hurting shadow of who she'd been. Elsa was stunned, the fire in her heart extinguished immediately. She knew that posture, that dullness, that broken expression. She'd seen it every day when she looked in the mirror. Without a word, Anna stood up and lifted her shirt up to her ribs with trembling hands. A single tear rolled down her face. Elsa gasped, eyes wide. All over Anna's torso was a multitude of cruel bruises, purple-blue mementos of unrestrained violence, marks of uncontrolled human sadism, marring the pearly translucence of her skin. Guilt bubbled up in Elsa like a stinging blow to her heart, threatening to crush it in its viselike grip. She'd just kicked a wounded puppy to the floor. Was she becoming the monster she'd always known humanity to be and had been running from all her life? Anna came over and sat beside the girl who had viciously slapped her just a while ago. She carefully toed a piece of the fragmented porcelain scattered on the floor. "My father... he was a great man once. When he entered the military special operatives in the war, though, he... he changed." Her voice broke, quivering with emotion, like a stormy lake barely held back by a flimsy dam. "He was fine for a while. Then, Arendelle started to fall. Water supplies came to a standstill, electrical lines failed, the bomb sirens rang until they themselves were destroyed. He was visibly frustrated and stressed out, always trying to drown out his worries in alcohol. Then he found an... an outlet for his stress". _A gauntleted fist slams into her abdomen, and she tastes the bitter blood streaming out of the corner of her grimacing lips as she doubles over in agony. _Tears flowed freely from Anna's eyes as she gestured at herself. "I don't blame him as a person. But he's no longer a father to me. That man died a long while ago."

Elsa's own emotions were drowned in the empathy she felt for Anna. Here was a girl, brutally scarred by violence, never giving up, facing the world with an optimistic radiance. Like a solitary flower in the middle of a blizzard. More courageous than Elsa could ever be, for the only thing she ever did, ever knew how to do, was to run away. From her problems, from the violent monster that was mankind, from the tortures of life. From herself. Regret and sympathy welled up in her heart and she put a hand on Anna's shoulder, rubbing small circles into her quivering, shivering tensed-up muscles. Elsa felt horrible inside, bitterness on her sharp, destructive tongue. The tongue that could only deal out anger, pain, hurt, that could never heal or mend, always tearing people down. The tongue of a monster. "I'm so so sorry. I didn't know." Anna sniffled, clumsily swiping away a tear. "Just... just accept my help. I can't bear to see another life just... go out like that. Please." Anna put her still trembling hand on Elsa's shoulder, and Elsa nodded imperceptibly, pulling Anna into a shaky embrace.

And so the two girls with a twisted past looked on into the convoluted future, separated by circumstance, united by the tears they shed and the tears in the fabric of their hearts.


	4. Chapter 4

**Hello once again guys, Ascendant Harbinger here. Just to clarify, Anna's father is indeed still alive but no longer the decent man that he once was. Also, Chapter 3 happens one day after the events of Chapter 2, and this chapter is held on the evening of the day described in Chapter 3. The main events of the story will start to happen from the next chapter, so please watch out for them! Also, I would like to thank all of you who reviewed, favourited and followed my story, your support is greatly appreciated! **

Elsa's hands trembled as they rested gingerly on the white keys of the piano, her heart a maelstrom of passion and despondency, her shallow breathing slowing to a crawl. She stared at the abject white and black of the keys, so unlike the indistinguishable greys of colourless, monotonous life, the suffocating haze that shrouds her judgement like the impenetrable opaque darkness of blind, blind night. She ran her thumb on the reassuring grain pattern of the wood, the only lifeline left that tethered her shattering soul to the few remaining shreds of her sanity.

"You sure you can do this? I'm sorry if I asked too much of you..." Anna put a reassuring hand on her shoulder, like a rusty anchor of a ship buffeted by the undying, cruel storms of time. Time doesn't heal, merely drags out an acute point of human suffering into a drawn-out migraine of torturous pain, like burning wax slowly dripping down onto her sensitive skin in a neverending stream of terror.

Elsa nodded slowly, a lock of her hair coming loose from her braid and hanging in front of her eyes like a curtain to her deepest regrets, her most abject fears, her warmest smiles, her most bitter tears, the notes that she had hidden so secretly in her soul starting to pour out into the warm tones of the piano. And as Elsa's fingers flew across the keys, the haunting melody of a lonely girl's tragic story of loss and confusion crescendoed into a jubilant expression of freedom and hope. Elsa's body rocked back and forth with emotion as she let go of her inhibitions and let her soul escape once more into her music.

_A gunshot rings out behind her like a violent clap of thunder as she plays her last note, and she turns around, her mother standing behind her, clutching her chest as the stream of scarlet runs slowly down her hands, muttering those three heartbreaking words as Elsa's world crashes down upon her. _Abruptly, the chorus ends and the notes from her fingertips become a sad, lilting tune of mourning. Its rhythm slows to a standstill like Elsa's grieving heart as her shivering hands plays out the last few haunting notes, the cries of the oppressed, the tears of the lost, the beating of the leaking heart, the last fragments of her emotional control shattered by grief, a hammer pounding on her vulnerable heart as she struggled to choke back a sob. And as the unwaveringly fragile notes filled the silence, Anna's heart was overwhelmed by a tidal wave of uncontrollable sentiment, arrows of melancholy lodging themselves in her delicate soul, her tears pouring out like blood as she stood there shaking with emotion. And as the final key came and passed once again, Elsa collapsed against the piano, in a sobbing, shivering mess, waves of grief tearing through her fragile body, her shoulders rising and falling with each shaky breath she managed in between her wracking whimpers of loss. And Anna put her arms around the trembling figure, the pair weeping bitterly in the name of all that was, all that had been, and all that would be, as the sun set over the horizon, turning exultant day to quiet night.

Anna prodded Elsa in the arm and she stirred lightly, curtained sleep slowly lifting from her heavy eyelids, tangled hair splayed all over her face. For a moment, Anna marveled at how beautiful and free Elsa looked when she wasn't pondering over the cruelties of life, the morning light refracting off her platinum blonde hair, glowing like an angel's halo. "Hey, look outside, Elsa." The fjords were now covered in pearly white snow, the rays of sunlight reflecting off them making them sparkle brilliantly like crystals. A light flurry of fine snow fell outside the windows like a veil of luminescence, snowflakes drifting gently down from their perch in the lofty clouds. Elsa couldn't help but gasp. Since her childhood, there'd never been once where the snow had been so light, so perfect, so fine, only thunderous blizzards of biting cold, the sharp snow and wind biting into everything like a vicious animal. The beginnings of a smile began to play about Elsa's lips as she stared out at the soft snow, muscles sore from leaning against the piano for an entire night.

"Do you want to build a snowman?" Anna ventured, brown eyes stunningly similar to the piano's majestic colour gleaming with excitement. Elsa, still dazed by the beautiful scene right outside, nodded slowly, her striking cyan eyes wide in appreciation of this rare beauty, like an innocent child's first venture into the snow. "Come here", Anna gestured happily at an inconspicuous cupboard near the door. "Grab a jacket, it's gonna be pretty cold out…" _Her breaths were ragged as the cold drowned out everything, the only reminder of her existence the blood roaring in her ears until even that slowly faded and she began to succumb. _The cold. A crushing migraine began to envelop her in its unforgiving, harsh grip, and her blood pounded in her ears, a sharp throbbing assaulting her fragile mind. She leaned against the wall as her knees went weak, fear like an insurmountable veil of darkness smothering her, her insides clenching violently.

"...after that we can go make snow angels and stuff! Helloo~ You're zoning out on me again. Are you okay?" The desire to pour out everything into Anna, all her crises, her nightmares, her dark past, was like quicksand, pulling at her soul greedily, tentacles of temptation exerting their slow, patient vice on her breaking psyche. She looked into Anna's concerned eyes, like a brown galaxy of unconditional love, and bitter guilt built up in Elsa's heart, threatening to burst it in shreds of regret and betrayal. She was going to lie to Anna, who had saved her terrible life, who had tolerated her despite her icy hostility, who had so openly revealed her deepest darkest secrets to Elsa, who was now repaying her kindness with lies, lies like bitter bile at the back of her throat, a sharp sting on her dishonest tongue. _Conceal, don't feel._ "Yeah, I...I'm fine", Elsa muttered in a whisper one octave too high and lifted a soft, velvety blue jacket and gloves off the rack.

And the two girls rushed out into the sincere embrace of the soft snow like the innocent, carefree teenagers they had once been, leaving all their deepest sorrows, their worst nightmares, their most terrible conflicts, behind, as the light powder enveloped them like an old friend.


End file.
